Lazy
Shōgun. Episodes 1 & 2.

I’m not one for paperless

People can tell the week I’ve had by how my office looks like at the end of it. Paperwork, notepads, and books explode outwards from my desk. Like some kind mind expansion blast wave.

If by the end of the week I’m jumping over piles of paper stacked on the floor it’s probably time to schedule a few days off. I prefer the tactile process of reading and writing on paper. That means I end up with a lot of paper. I had to stop buying notebooks a while back because I had too many blank pages yet to be filled. Stationary is fun, but it’s also clutter. 

My hand writing was atrocious before I spent the majority of my time in front of a computer and it’s worse now. That said, if I want to commit a concept to memory the fastest way I’ve found of doing that is scribbling my summary of it and expanding on it with my own thoughts. Each stroke of the pen is like filing something properly in my brain. 

Any notebook I retire gets a final cover to cover read through to pluck out any forgotten gems I may have written down. I record those in text files using Markdown. There are a lot of digital black holes out there and I try to ensure I’m not making another one. I used OneNote a lot years ago and am now loath to even open the app. Too much trash in there. My strategy now is to do all the sorting and cleaning before I commit something to digital. In a weird turn of events I see digital as being permanent and paper to be temporary.

In the end if you want to keep good notes organising those notes can take as much time as you spent writing them. 

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Photo by Wesley Tingey on Unsplash